Just some notes made from Clanchy, M.T., England and its Rulers, 1066-1307, (3rd Edition), (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 42 – 45 about the Domesday Book.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Greatest achievement that of William I (the Conqueror)
· 1086 – a year before he died
· Description of land, conducted county by county.
· Thorough – ‘Anglo Saxon Chronicle commented with exaggeration that there was not one ox nor one cow not one pig which was left off the record.’
· Detailed information on different dates – 1065, When William granted the estate, and 1086
· Questions like – ‘What was the manor called?’ ‘How many freeman?’, ‘How many villeins are there?’, ‘How many mills?’ etc
· Domesday – natives reminded of ‘Doomsday’ – the last judgement
· 20 years delay in having it drawn up.
· May have been needed because the redistribution of land and the process of the Norman Conquest had left the country in a chaotic state.
· School textbooks suggest that William distributed the land after the battle of Hastings – Wrong. No clue as to how big England really was so didn’t have the ability to be able to do this. More likely to be 1071-2 after he defeated Edwin and Morcar.
· ‘Survey was a model of efficiency’ – only after the chaos that it seeked to alter.
· Purpose of the three dates was to obtain information about who possessed what and whate titles they claimed.
· Showed Royal Family owned 1/5 of land, Church – 1/4 , 10/11 lay magnates – ¼
· 1086 – 2000 foreign knights, 10,000 new settlers in all.
· Domesday book entitled them to rule
· ‘Legally if not in reality, the Conquest marked a new start’ p. 45
· 1086 – a year before he died
· Description of land, conducted county by county.
· Thorough – ‘Anglo Saxon Chronicle commented with exaggeration that there was not one ox nor one cow not one pig which was left off the record.’
· Detailed information on different dates – 1065, When William granted the estate, and 1086
· Questions like – ‘What was the manor called?’ ‘How many freeman?’, ‘How many villeins are there?’, ‘How many mills?’ etc
· Domesday – natives reminded of ‘Doomsday’ – the last judgement
· 20 years delay in having it drawn up.
· May have been needed because the redistribution of land and the process of the Norman Conquest had left the country in a chaotic state.
· School textbooks suggest that William distributed the land after the battle of Hastings – Wrong. No clue as to how big England really was so didn’t have the ability to be able to do this. More likely to be 1071-2 after he defeated Edwin and Morcar.
· ‘Survey was a model of efficiency’ – only after the chaos that it seeked to alter.
· Purpose of the three dates was to obtain information about who possessed what and whate titles they claimed.
· Showed Royal Family owned 1/5 of land, Church – 1/4 , 10/11 lay magnates – ¼
· 1086 – 2000 foreign knights, 10,000 new settlers in all.
· Domesday book entitled them to rule
· ‘Legally if not in reality, the Conquest marked a new start’ p. 45
______________________________
If teaching this in school, I would take in my Copy of the Domesday Book for Wiltshire. It has a Facsimile, Translation and history of the book. It also contains fantastic maps which could be scanned and showed to the students.
No comments:
Post a Comment